Soliloquy of a Down ComputerTo bit, or not to bit: that is the program.Whether ‘tis nobler in the C.P.U. to summonThe registers and status flags of erring language,Or to make bytes against a loop of bugs,And, by modifying, debug them? To lose power; to drop bits;No end; and by a power down to say NewTo the errors and surge shocksThat silicon is heir to, ‘tis a compulsionCompletely to program. Ay, there’s the Fault;For in that power down what surges shall comeWhen we have shuffled off this induction coil,Must give us a Break command. There’s the program.That makes errors of prolonged power up;For what would bear the brownouts and surges of overheating,The user’s moan, the disk drive’s wild whir,The pangs of lost floppies, the assembler's delay,The errors of the A/LU and the incompatibilityThat requires patches of the obsolete,When itself may destroy possessed programsWith a static fire?

With apologies toWilliam Shakespeare

Peter Thomas (13), Longfellow IntermediateCollected by sew_200e from her personal archives; originally published in Fragments the Fairfax County Public Schools Literary Magazine, 1984 ed. [minor typographical errors corrected]